In many applications, a lot of information may have to be acquired from customers and/or other entities. The information is typically in the form of digitized data. In the retail industry, for example, information may have to be acquired for purposes such as customer identification and inventory management. In the health care industry, as another example, insurance data may be received from patients, and signatures may be received from the patients in connection with patient consent for charges and treatment. Photographs of the patients may also have to be received and stored, for identification purposes.
The amount of data that have to be processed for many transactions, as well as the variety of the sources of the data, and the variations in vendor and/or jurisdictional requirements when processing the data, may create challenges for these transactions.